


The Monsters Under the Bed

by PyrrhaIphis



Category: Velvet Goldmine
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Monsters, Some Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-06 19:48:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16394009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PyrrhaIphis/pseuds/PyrrhaIphis
Summary: As long as he could remember, Arthur had always known there were monsters living under his bed.  He was barely able to talk the first time he’d seen a furry hand rising up—but he’d been capable enough to scream out for Mum before hiding his head under the covers and hoping it wouldn’t get him.  Another day, he’d only heard scraping and scratching, but as his wails brought the sound of footsteps running towards his room, Arthur had peeked out of the covers enough to see something blue and sparkling dive back under the bed.(Based on an "adopt a fanfiction" prompt on the NaNoWriMo forums last year, posted by Cody_Thomas, starting "Imagine your OTP: One is an abused child, the other is the monster that lives under their bed."  But I mixed it up a little, so it's not just one monster under the bed...]





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> As usual, please let me know if there are any inappropriate Americanisms so I can fix them. Thanks!
> 
> Also, it was pretty late into the fic that I was able to make this apparent in a naturalistic way, but it's important to keep in mind that this AU doesn't change Arthur's age. (In other words, this is all taking place in the 1960s.)

            As long as he could remember, Arthur had always known there were monsters living under his bed.  He was barely able to talk the first time he’d seen a furry hand rising up—but he’d been capable enough to scream out for Mum before hiding his head under the covers and hoping it wouldn’t get him.  Another day, he’d only heard scraping and scratching, but as his wails brought the sound of footsteps running towards his room, Arthur had peeked out of the covers enough to see something blue and sparkling dive back under the bed.

            Of course, Mum and Dad had never believed him about the monsters.  Mum at least was nice about it; she would pat him on the head and tell him it was okay to be afraid of the unknown, but that there really wasn’t anything under his bed except an old pair of his baby boots.  (He had looked one day at noon, and Mum was wrong:  there were no shoes under there.  Nothing but a small ball of light brown fur, and a few sprinkles of blue glitter.)  Arthur had only been five when Dad had told him that it was high time he acted like a man and put aside these childish fears.  And of course Nigel just laughed at him and called him names.

            By the time he was six, Arthur had all but stopped sleeping at night.  He would quiver in fear under the covers, listening to the monsters making themselves at home in his room.  One of them would pace around the room, claws clacking against the floor, while the other sat on the side of the bed.  The creak of the springs as the monster sat down and the feeling of the mattress lowering under its weight always set Arthur to chewing on his lips in a desperate attempt to keep himself from crying or wetting himself in fear.  The one pacing the room would toss out comments about Arthur’s things—judging the quality of a toy or a book, usually—or just talk to the other monster with big words Arthur didn’t understand.  Once he went crashing to the floor, then let out such a fierce string of curse words that despite his fear, Arthur had to laugh.

            “The boy’s awake!” the other monster hissed, just before his weight disappeared from the side of the bed.  Feet ran towards the bed, then all sound stopped.

            Tentatively, Arthur had pushed the covers aside to look at the room, and he hadn’t seen any sign of the monsters remaining.  But he’d still been too afraid to sleep the rest of the night.  In the morning, he found out why the monster had tripped:  Arthur had left a bit of dirty laundry in the middle of the floor.  It was torn to shreds by the monster’s claws.  Despite Arthur’s assurances that it was the monster from under his bed who had done that, not him, his father still cuffed him so hard that he was seeing stars all day.

            Things looked up once he started school, though.  He slept through most of his lessons, and one of his teachers called him into her office at the end of the day to ask why he spent so much of his time sleeping.  She was a very nice lady, and seemed truly concerned about him, so Arthur had tearfully told her the truth about the monsters.  She gave him a big hug, and told him he wasn’t alone:  many children felt there were monsters living under their beds.  It hurt that she, too, didn’t believe him, but the warmth of his very first hug took away much of the sting.  Even better, she followed him home and spoke to his parents, and insisted that they provide him with a nightlight so he’d be able to sleep, because every child knows monsters are afraid of light.

            Honestly, Arthur hadn’t known that, not one bit, but he hoped it was true.

            The following night, with a nightlight putting out just enough light to let him see the dim outlines of about half the contents of his room, Arthur laid awake, ready to pull the covers up over his head at the first sign of the monsters coming out.  But that sign never came, and eventually he fell asleep.

            Things stabilised then, and Arthur thought he might be able to have a normal life.  Of course, sometimes the power would go out in a storm, and then he’d have to hide under the covers as the monster emerged again, leaving behind the occasional clump of fur or blue scale, but that was a rare occurrence, and usually he was able to sleep uninhibited.

            Until that day when he was seven—almost eight!—and his brother came into his room as Arthur was doing his class work.  “I’m working on a project,” Nigel said, casually strolling into the room, “and I need a light bulb.”

            “Why tell me?” Arthur asked.  “Get Mum to give you one.”

            Nigel just laughed.  “No, this one will do fine.”

            Arthur put down his pencil and looked over to see Nigel unscrewing the light bulb from the nightlight.  “No!  Nigel, I need that!”

            “No, _I_ need it,” Nigel insisted.  “You just _want_ it, because you’re still a baby.”

            “I’m not.”  Arthur shook his head as he walked over towards his brother.  “They really are under the bed—and they’ll come out if the lights aren’t on.  Nigel, give it back!”  He tried to take the bulb, but his brother held it up too high for him to reach it and laughed as Arthur jumped over and over again, trying to take it back.

            That didn’t last long, though.  Nigel soon tired of the game, and shoved Arthur aside so hard that his head collided with the wall.  That only made Nigel laugh.  “Sounds like a coconut shell,” he chortled.  “Always knew your head was empty!”  He was still laughing as he left the room, where Arthur was collapsed on the floor, crying and clutching his head.

            At dinner, Arthur had asked Mum if she had another bulb for his nightlight.  She might have given him one, if Dad hadn’t heard him ask.  He insisted that no son of his could ever need to hide from figments of his own bloody imagination like that, and that if Arthur didn’t stop being such a whiny little girl, he was going to get a drubbing he’d never forget.  Mum had smiled weakly and assured him that Dad didn’t really mean it, but Arthur knew he did.

            That night, Arthur left the lights on when he went to bed.  It didn’t feel as proper a solution as the nightlight had, but it would keep the monsters under the bed, and that was all that mattered.  But his father saw the light and stormed into the room, screaming at him for still being awake so late.  Arthur hadn’t been awake, but he certainly was after all that racket.

            On his way out, Dad turned the lights off, leaving Arthur in abject darkness, and equally abject fear.

            He was already quivering under the covers even before he heard the monsters come out.  “Shit, it stinks in here,” one of them said.  It was the one who was always pacing the room; Arthur recognised his voice.  It was deep and manly, with a coarseness to it.  “Smells like a brewery.”

            “I don’t smell anything but fear,” the other said.  His voice was lighter, and sounded much more refined.

            “My nose is stronger than yours.”  A grunt, almost a growl.  “Let’s get outta here.  I can’t deal with this smell.”

            As he heard the monsters crawling back under the bed, Arthur reflected that for once he was actually grateful to his father for drinking so heavily.

 

***

 

            A few days after Nigel took away the bulb from the nightlight, Arthur came home from school to discover the whole device simply gone.  He asked Mum about it, but she smiled and avoided any answer.  Arthur was so dreading the thought of the monsters taking over his room again every single night that he made a terrible mistake:

            At dinner, when Mum asked him how his maths test had gone, he answered truthfully.

            It wasn’t that Arthur was actually all that bad at arithmetic.  But he’d slept so badly that of course he hadn’t been able to concentrate on the test.  Of course he had done so poorly that he would need to take the test over again.  It wasn’t his fault:  it was Nigel’s fault, it was Dad’s fault, it was the monsters’ fault.

            Dad didn’t see it that way, and blacked his eye for being so stupid.

            Arthur was sent up to his room straight after dinner—without any pudding, though that hardly mattered—to spend the night studying.  Instead, he crawled straight into bed and cried himself to sleep.

            In the middle of the night, he was woken by voices from above him.  “That’s quite a shiner,” one was saying.  “Wonder if he gave back as good as he got?”

            “I’d doubt that,” the other replied, with a sigh.

            “I guess not,” the first agreed.  “Those scrawny little arms could never throw a decent punch.”

            Arthur started trembling despite himself, recognising the voices of the monsters from under his bed.

            “You’ve woken him, noisy!” the second voice hissed.

            Hearing the sound of a monster retreating under the bed, Arthur ventured to open his unbruised eye, hoping he was alone again.  It was quite dark in the room, so he couldn’t see it well, but he could see enough to be aware of the shape looming over him, vaguely human in silhouette, apart from the wolf-like ears at the top of its head.  Arthur recoiled, moving as far to the back of the bed as he could, until his body collided with the wall.

            “Who hit you?” the wolf-man asked.

            Arthur’s voice was strangled by fear, but he managed to choke out the words “My father.”

            The creature let out a slow breath.  “Yeah…that sucks.”  A light noise that sounded a bit like a growl, but which Arthur thought was probably supposed to be a laugh.  “My old man was a piece of shit, too.”

            Monsters had fathers?  As soon as he thought about it, Arthur realised there was no reason he should have been surprised by that, and yet he absolutely was.  “Really?” he asked, his voice no longer muted by his terror.

            The wolf-man nodded.  “He used to—”

            “Get down here!” the other voice hissed from under the bed.  “They’re coming!”

            The monster vanished from Arthur’s sight in the blink of an eye, leaving Arthur entirely alone when his father burst through the door and demanded to know who he was talking to.  Mum was hurrying after him, trying to calm him, but Arthur could smell the drink on him from across the room; there was no calming Dad when he was pissed.

            “I wasn’t—I was asleep!” Arthur claimed.  If he could convince them he’d been talking in his sleep, maybe Dad wouldn’t—

            “Don’t lie to me!”  Dad lifted him out of bed by his shoulder and slapped him.  “I want the truth!”

            “Jim, calm down!” Mum cried, trying to peel his hand off Arthur’s shoulder.  That earned _her_ a blow to the face, too.

            Arthur did his best to steel himself for what was to come.  There was no point in crying or trying to plead out of it.  The beating would probably be over faster if he didn’t offer any resistance.

 

***

 

            As he left the house, Mum told Arthur he should claim to have fallen down the stairs, if anyone asked about the bruises on his face.  He didn’t want to get a reputation for being clumsy as well as stupid, though, so instead when his teacher asked, he said his bicycle tyre had caught on a hole in the pavement.  Might have been a more convincing lie if he actually _had_ a bicycle, but it was the sort of thing other boys claimed and got away with!  So why did it land _him_ in the principal’s office for fighting?  He spent the better part of an hour being grilled about who the other boy was.  He could hardly have admitted that it had been his father.  That probably would have gotten him sent to _jail_!  Arthur couldn’t imagine how horrible it would be a seven year old in jail, so he kept insisting that he hadn’t been fighting.  It wasn’t actually a lie:  _he_ hadn’t done any fighting at all.

            It was only after he got home and Nigel started mocking all his bruises that it occurred to Arthur that he should have lied and claimed it had been his brother he’d been fighting with.  Someone _needed_ to fight with him.

            Dad didn’t come home that night, so Mum was in a terrible mood, which she took out on the boys by cooking all the foods they detested most.  Arthur was fairly famished when he finally gave up on his homework and crawled into bed; his stomach kept gurgling as he was trying to fall asleep.

            “Why didn’t you eat dinner?”  The voice woke Arthur just as he was falling asleep.  It was the softer voice, not the wolf-man.  “Your stomach is making the most revolting noises.”

            Arthur just sighed.  What was the point of hiding under the covers if the monsters were going to talk to him anyway?  Besides…  “Are you going to eat me?” he asked, as he pushed the covers aside.  The moonlight leaking in through a slit in the curtains was hitting the monster, illuminating points of brilliant blue light here and there across his unclad body.

            “What an absurd idea.”

            “You don’t eat children?”  Wasn’t that what monsters did?

            “Of course not.”

            Arthur pressed his lips together, trying to understand that.  “What was I so afraid of, then?”

            “Don’t ask _me_.  You’re the one who was afraid; you’re the only one who can answer that.”

            That wasn’t a very helpful answer.  Not at all.  “Why do you live under my bed?”

            The monster let out a disappointed sigh, and shook his head before retreating back down under the bed.  Arthur wondered, idly, how two monsters the size of grown men even _fit_ underneath his rather puny bed, but he was too scared to look.  Not in the middle of the night, at least.

            He did look the next morning, but all he saw down there was a bit of dust, and a dirty sock.  Arthur even snuck into Nigel’s room to see if there were any signs of monsters under _his_ bed, but the only thing he found under his brother’s bed was a filthy magazine filled with pictures of under-clad women.  Had the monsters left it there, or did Nigel actually want to look at that?  Either way, he put the thing back where he’d found it right away, and hurried down to breakfast.  Getting caught in his brother’s room was a good way to get another beating.  And he still had bruises from the last one…

 

***

 

            Arthur didn’t have as much trouble sleeping as he used to.  Maybe he believed the monster’s claim that they didn’t eat children.  Maybe he didn’t care if they _did_ eat him.

            It was months later that he finally saw the monsters, on his eighth birthday.  It had been a miserable birthday:  Dad had made plans to go drinking half the night with some of his mates from the plant, and he had forgotten all about Arthur’s birthday, and got terribly cross with Mum for having remembered.  No presents, no cake, no celebration, and a mild beating for being upset about it.

            There was a full moon that night.  Arthur had been sent up to go straight to bed, so he couldn’t have the lights on, but he found that if he left the curtains open, he could still see enough to do his homework.  No point in ending up in trouble in school as well as at home.

            He was still doing his schoolwork when he heard a voice behind him.  “Oh, you’re still up!”

            Arthur turned in his chair, and saw the wolf-man standing in the room, staring at him with huge, blue eyes.  He didn’t look like the Wolfman in the movies:  his face was shaped like a real wolf’s, snout and all, but his body was shaped more like a man’s than a wolf’s, despite the fur and the claws and the tail.  Arthur knew he should be terrified to see the beast face to face like this, but he couldn’t manage it.

            “It’s barely past eight,” he said.  “Why would I be asleep?”

            “Well, the lights were off…”  The wolf shrugged.

            Arthur did his best to hold in everything that was bothering him.  “I’m supposed to be in bed,” he said.  “And keep your voice down, or my father will hear you again.”  Dad had probably already left for the pub, but it would be just as bad if Mum or Nigel heard them.

            “You’re not scared of us anymore?” the wolf asked, with a light chuckle that sounded a bit like a friendly growl.

            Arthur shrugged.  “I think I’ve used up all my fear.”  He looked back at his homework again.  The writing was messy, and his answers were probably all wrong.  He’d have to do it over in the morning.  He couldn’t afford to do poorly, after all.  That would only give Dad another excuse…

            The wolf’s claws clacked against the floor as he walked over to stand next to Arthur.  “What’s the matter?”  A slight pause.  “Has your old man been hitting you again?”

            It was a struggle to keep motionless; part of Arthur wanted desperately to start crying.  “No more than usual.”

            The wolf crouched down beside him, and Arthur suddenly felt something furry rub up against his cheek.  “You’re crying,” the wolf said.

            Arthur bit his lip, looking over at the wolf as he withdrew the furry hand he’d used to wipe away a tear.  “It’s not—it’s nothing,” Arthur insisted.

            “C’mon, don’t gimme that.”

            “Curt, what _are_ you doing?”  The other monster’s voice came as such a shock that Arthur nearly jumped out of his seat.  Once he recovered from his surprise a little, he was able to turn and see the other one approaching the centre of the tiny bedroom.  Unlike the wolf—who was covered head-to-toe in surprisingly soft fur of a lovely light brown colour—this one was entirely  hairless, blue in colour, and covered in glitter and gems.  The wolf had a scary look that became friendly after looking in his eyes—like a big dog—but the other monster had a demonic yet ethereal beauty to him.  “The boy’s wide awake.”

            “Lighten up, Max,” the wolf—Curt—sighed, standing up again.  “He’s crying.”

            “Then stop frightening him.”

            “No, it wasn’t him!” Arthur objected, loudly enough that he gasped and covered his mouth, turning terrified eyes in the direction of the door to his room.  But no footsteps came running.

            The blue demon—Max—frowned, and shook his head.  “And what do you have in mind, then?”

            Curt shrugged.  “I dunno.”

            “You never _think_ before you act,” Max sighed.  “It’s dangerous, being so close to the door.  What if someone comes in?”

            “Well…”  The wolf just stood there for a moment, scratching behind his ear with the vicious claws on one hand.  “But we can stay if we’re closer to the bed, right?”

            The demon chuckled.  “I suppose.”

            Max took a seat on the edge of the bed, and Curt walked over to sit beside him, then gestured to Arthur.  Reluctantly—he only had Max’s word that they didn’t eat children, after all!—Arthur got up and walked over to the bed, taking a seat next to Curt.  The whole time he sat there, Curt’s tail lazily waggled back and forth, occasionally brushing up against Arthur’s side and back.

            “So, why were you crying?” Curt asked, setting one furry hand on Arthur’s knee.  Like when he had brushed the tear away, he had his fingers folded up, so his claws hit his own palm instead of hitting Arthur.

            “Um…I…it—it’s nothing, really.  Nothing that doesn’t happen all the time,” Arthur insisted.  He knew talking about it would only make him cry more.  That was why he could never tell anyone at school.  Some of the other boys already called him a girl.  How much worse would they get if they saw him crying?

            Max got up, and moved over to take a seat on Arthur’s other side, using one cold, blue hand to turn his face to look directly up into Max’s.  His eyes were piercing, and a little scary, but Arthur couldn’t feel afraid, somehow.  “Then why are you crying?”

            Arthur wriggled his face out of the demon’s grasp, and rubbed at his eyes with one clumsy, embarrassed fist.  “It’s nothing,” he repeated.

            “Then why were you supposed to be in bed so early?” Curt countered.

            A deep sigh wrenched itself out of Arthur’s lungs as he fought not to explain.  But they were already seeing him crying, and they were monsters, so who could they tell anyway?  “It…uh…today’s my birthday…” he started.

            “Happy birthday!” Curt said, wrapping a furry arm around his shoulders.  “How old are you?”

            “Eight.”

            “Curt, it’s obviously been anything but happy.  Let the boy speak.  After all, _you_ were the one who wanted to know.”

            Something about the withdrawal of the arm from Arthur’s shoulders felt sheepish, and caused him to let out half a chuckle.  But the sound died quickly as he reflected back on the day he’d had.  “My mum was going to give me a cake and some little presents, but…she was waitin’ for my father to get home,” Arthur explained.  “It’s just…um…he got home late, and said he was goin’ back out to meet some friends at the pub, and—and—and when Mum said he needed to stay home for my party, he went into the kitchen and…”  He stopped, hiccoughing through his tears.  No attempts to wipe them away were enough to dry his cheeks, though, because too many new ones were coming.  “Dad threw my cake against the wall, and said I wasn’t allowed to ‘ave a birthday ‘cause I’m so stupid, and—and—and when he saw me cryin’ about it, he started hitting me again…”

            The wolf suddenly pulled Arthur in tight against his furry chest.  “I’m sorry,” he whispered, his breath hot against Arthur’s hair.

            Arthur tried to respond, but he was crying too hard.  All he could do was bury his face against Curt’s chest and let it all out.  He eventually cried himself to sleep, still encircled by the big, hairy arms, and gently lulled by the occasional stroke of a cool, scaly hand through his hair.


	2. Chapter 2

            When Arthur awoke the morning after his eighth birthday, he couldn’t be sure how much of his memories of the previous night had actually happened.  He didn’t even have to look at his bruises in the mirror to know the beating had happened, and the slightest glance at his desk certainly told him the pathetic attempt at doing his schoolwork in the dark had unfortunately happened.  But he woke neatly tucked into bed, even though he remembered falling asleep sitting on the side of the bed with two monsters.  Had they put him in bed after he fell asleep, or had he dreamed the whole thing?

            He wasn’t even sure which one he wanted to be true.  But he did decide that he would leave the curtains open whenever there was a lot of moonlight.  Just in case.

            He wasn’t able to get his work finished before class, though, and ended up having to stay after school to do extra work.  That left him in the charge of a particularly cantankerous old woman who kept looking at him askance and telling him exactly what she thought of little boys who spent all their time fighting instead of learning.  Though he would have liked to, Arthur couldn’t muster the courage to tell her that he had never fought anyone in his life.

            The day did have one bright side, however.  When he got home, his mother gave him an envelope that had just come in the day’s post.  It was a birthday card from his aunt in Surrey, and she had sent him a bit of money inside the card.  Arthur took the money straight to a second-hand shop and bought a used radio he could put on the table by his bed.

            If there was music playing, his father wouldn’t hear the monsters.  And even if he did, he’d think it was just part of the music.

            Unfortunately, Dad was already home by the time Arthur returned with the radio.  He wasn’t too thrilled by the idea that Arthur had gotten a birthday present—and he had never liked Mum’s sister to begin with, so it having come from her made it even worse—and he didn’t approve of modern music at all, and insisted that Arthur wasn’t allowed to use it to listen to that awful rock and roll.  But Nigel listened to rock and roll all the time!  He even had a record player and everything.  It wasn’t fair that Nigel was allowed to spend money—money Dad had given him!—on music over and over again and Arthur wasn’t allowed to listen to it all, having only spent money the once.  But it would probably be okay, as long as he kept the volume low…

            When Arthur went upstairs to finish his schoolwork and go to bed, the first thing he did was to set up the radio.  He turned it on, and soon it was producing the very rock and roll that Dad hated so much.  It was that Beatles group that all the girls at school kept talking about.  The music was nice, but something about it wasn’t quite what Arthur wanted, though he couldn’t identify what.  Still, having a little music going made doing his work much more pleasant, and he was in an almost happy mood by the time he turned in for the night.

 

***

 

            It was about a week after his birthday that Arthur next spoke to either of the monsters.  Though the moonlight was fading, he was still leaving the curtains open.  Having the radio playing meant it was harder to hear them slipping out from under the bed, though, so it was pure chance that he happened to open his eyes and see the pale moonlight sparkling off the glittered scales of the blue demon.

            Arthur sat up in bed, watching the demon as he stood at the window, looking up at the stars.  There was something nostalgic and a little sad about his posture, as if he was gazing on something that had been long since taken away from him.

            “Um…your name is Max, right?” Arthur asked, when the demon looked away from the window and saw him.  He still wasn’t sure, after all, that any of that on his birthday had really happened.

            “Maxwell to you,” the demon corrected him.

            Arthur nodded, smiling.  So it _had_ been real!  “Can I ask you something?”

            “You just did,” Maxwell said, with a lilting laugh.

            That sort of response from a grown-up usually meant Arthur would get a harsh word—or a blow—if he asked anything else.  But Maxwell was smiling gently at him.  It was impossible to believe he was cross…  “Well, um…why do you live under my bed?”  Arthur shook his head.  “No, _how_ do you live there?  You’re not there in the daytime…”

            Maxwell shook his head.  “It’s not something little boys can understand,” he said.  “We don’t spend all our time _here_ , in any event.  Right now, Curt’s off to—how did he put it?”  He rubbed his chin thoughtfully, then laughed.  “Scare the pants off a bully.”

            Arthur couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to scare a bully so badly that they stripped naked.  Of course, most of the bullies he had met were old men like Dad or ugly boys like the ones at school.  “Which one?” he asked, hoping it was one of those older boys who had nearly broken his arm last summer.

            Maxwell shrugged.  “Some teenager in a place called Michigan.  Why?”

            “Michigan?”  Arthur blinked curiously.  “Is Curt American?”  Now that the subject came up, he had rather _sounded_ American.

            “Yes, originally.”

            “Is he a bigfoot?”

            Maxwell laughed so hard he had to wipe away tears.  “Not in the slightest,” he said, once he finally finished laughing.  “You certainly are asking a lot of questions,” he added, as he moved closer to the bed.  “Are you always so inquisitive?”

            Biting his lip, Arthur shook his head.  “Most grown-ups don’t let me ask questions.”

            “Your schoolmasters must.”

            “Not really.”

            “Maybe you need to go to a better school,” Maxwell suggested.

            “It’s not like I ‘ave a choice.  If I don’t do what Dad tells me, I’ll just get a drubbing and end up doin’ it anyway.”

            Maxwell sat down on the edge of the bed, and gently stroked the back of Arthur’s hair.  “Some people are like that.”

            “Do you think if you or Curt gave him a scare he’d stop bein’ such a bully?”  It didn’t seem terribly likely, but if there was any chance…

            “Old men like that are usually past changing,” Maxwell said, shaking his head.  “Try and make them see the error of their ways, and they only become more obstinate in their desire to punish everyone who doesn’t agree with them.”

            “Oh.”

            Maxwell chuckled with a glee that sounded almost wicked.  “We might be able to scare him enough to give him a heart attack, though.  If you’d like that.”

            Arthur shook his head.  “I don’t want him to die.  I just want him to be nice to me.”

            “I do understand how you feel,” Maxwell said, with a sombre smile.  “All too well.”

            They sat in silence, the boy and the demon, until footsteps sounded in the hall outside.  They were heavy, slow and a little unsteady—Dad on his way to bed after a night at the pub—and the sound of them was enough to make Maxwell dive under the bed without a word.

            Sadly, Arthur laid back down again, hiding his head under the covers, in case Dad should open his door on the way past.

 

***

 

            As Arthur grew older, Curt and Maxwell came by his room less frequently.  At least one of them usually dropped by at the full moon, though, and they always appeared on his birthday.  It wasn’t until his eleventh birthday that he finally got up the nerve to ask why they didn’t come every night like they had when he was little.

            “Union rules,” Curt chuckled.

            Maxwell scowled at him, and shook his head.  “We aren’t really supposed to come out except around children.  The younger the better.”

            “Why?”

            They looked at each other for a moment, then back at Arthur.  “It’s…uh…well…we’re sorta…um…”  Curt stopped to scratch his head.  “Max, can you get this one?”

            The demon shook his head.  “There’s no way to make it sound appealing.”

            “What is it?” Arthur asked.  “I won’t judge you, I promise.”

            Maxwell chuckled, and Curt sighed.  “That’s easy to say, kid, but…”

            “We made a trade,” Maxwell said.  “Our payment—our punishment—for it was this.”  He gestured around them at Arthur’s room.  “We have no choice but to spend our nights frightening children.”

            “What…?  But why?”  Who would want to make Arthur suffer even more than he already did?

            “It’s just the rules,” Curt told him, laying a furry hand on his shoulder.  “We can’t get out of ‘em.”  He laughed.  “Trust me, I tried.”

            Maxwell laughed, too.  “Yes, you certainly did!  What an absurd spectacle _that_ was!”

            Curt withdrew his hand from Arthur’s shoulder, crossing both arms in front of his chest.  “You don’t have to find it _that_ fucking funny.”

            “But the sight of you—!”  Maxwell’s voice was momentarily subsumed with laughter.  When it subsided, he slithered over to Curt and draped an arm about him in a wonderfully tender way.  “Don’t pout, love.  You know I’m glad you rebelled against them.  How else would we have met?”

            “I don’t pout.”

            “My, how little you know yourself!”

            “I’m telling you, I don’t pout!” Curt insisted, his fur starting to raise in his indignation.

            They continued their spat for several minutes, until Arthur couldn’t fight his laughter any longer.  They argued like the leads in a movie, every word and gesture betraying tender compassion packaged in irritation and petty differences.  His laughter ended the quarrel very quickly.

            “Don’t you fucking laugh at me, you little brat!” Curt snarled, and for a moment Arthur actually thought he was enraged as the wolf charged him.  But then one furry arm wrapped around him, pulling him in close, and a closed fist began rubbing rapidly across the top his head.  Even though he struggled a bit to get out, Arthur was still giggling, enjoying the feeling of warmth all around him.

            “Arthur!”  His father’s voice roaring in the hall put an end to all that.  “What’s all that racket in there?!”  Thankfully, Arthur had locked the door, knowing his friends would come by that night.  They disappeared under the bed even as the door began rattling furiously.  “Arthur!!  Open this bloody door!”

            He hated to do it, but he feared what would happen if he didn’t, so Arthur ran over to open the door and let his father into the room.

            “What was all that noise!?”  Dad was looking around the room crazily, as if he expected to see evidence that Arthur had been doing something bad.  “Who’s in here with you?!”

            “It was just the radio, Dad,” Arthur insisted.  “There was a really funny advert on, and I couldn’t help laughin’.  That’s all…”

            His father picked up the beaten-up old radio off Arthur’s bedside table, and yanked on the cord until it ripped out of the wall, cutting Mick Jagger off mid-word.  “One more _sound_ out of this room, and you’ll be joining this damned thing!” he bellowed, before throwing the radio right through Arthur’s window.  An unpleasant crunch came faintly through the jagged hole in the glass as the radio collided with the street outside.  “Not the slightest sound!”

            For several minutes after the room reverberated with the slamming of the bedroom door, the only sound in Arthur’s bedroom was the cold winter wind whistling through the hole in the window.  He had long ago mastered the art of crying silently.  Dad was merciless at the sight of a boy crying.  Because boys weren’t supposed to cry.  Unless they were useless failures like Arthur.

            The sound of a car driving past the house roused him a bit.  Looking out the hole in the window, Arthur could see that there was nothing but broken scrap left of his radio.  The pieces looked to be so small that they probably wouldn’t even do any harm to the cars that would be driving over them all night.  Miserably, he closed the curtains, in the hopes of keeping at least a little of the winter air _outside_.

            Arthur turned on the lights—there was no chance Curt and Maxwell would come back after _that_ —and grabbed the bin from beside his desk.  Even though Dad was the one who broke the window, he’d probably give Arthur a beating if there was any broken glass on the floor in the morning.

            The big pieces were easy to clean up—even if he did cut his fingers on them a few times—but he really had to improvise to get the little pieces.  After several false starts, he used one piece of paper to sweep them up onto a second one.  Then he had to throw both pieces of paper away, because they had so much blood dripped on them that they weren’t any good as paper anymore.

            Before Arthur laid down in bed to cry himself to sleep, he grabbed a dark shirt out of his dirty laundry, and clumsily tried to wrap both his hands up in it, so the blood wouldn’t get on his sheets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just in case anyone misunderstands, it's not actually that the radio shattered into teeny pieces on impact; Arthur's misjudging the size of the pieces due to distance and lack of light.


	3. Chapter 3

            Everything hurt.

            His face was in so much pain that it had gone around the back into numbness.

            At least one rib was cracked, he was sure of it.  Every breath was agony.

            His eyes were stinging more and more with every tear, but he couldn’t stop crying.

            But his heart hurt most of all.

            Arthur didn’t know how long he had been sitting there, curled up and crying onto his knees, his back pressed into the corner.  He hadn’t even realised it had gotten dark out until he heard a warm, gruff voice.

            “What’s wrong?”

            Arthur shook his head.  Fairy stories couldn’t help him now.  Nothing could.  He might as well be dead.

            But Curt wouldn’t be rebuffed, and soon Arthur could feel a warm arm pull him out of the corner, pressing him up against the wolf’s furry side.  Neither of them talked; Arthur kept crying, and Curt just held him silently.

            “What happened?”  Maxwell’s voice was quiet, barely more than a whisper.  One of his soft, cold hands gripped Arthur’s.

            Arthur didn’t answer.  What was the point of it?

            “C’mon, we can’t help if you don’t tell us what’s going on,” Curt said.

            “Go away,” Arthur spat.  “You’re not real!  You’re just symptoms of my disease!”

            “What disease would that be?” Maxwell asked, his voice surprisingly insulted.

            No matter how hard he tried, Arthur couldn’t form the word.  He didn’t want to believe he was sick.  It didn’t _feel_ like sickness.  But his teachers said it was, and his parents said it was, and they were all grown-ups.  They had to know better than him.

            “Look, I know we haven’t been back in a while,” Curt said, pulling him closer, “but you’re too old now.  We got in a lot of trouble for coming here on your thirteenth birthday.  We’re not supposed to hit the rooms of teens except in special circumstances.”

            “You say that now, but how hard you tried to get here for the fourteenth!”  Maxwell’s voice was warmly mocking, and followed by that artful, lilting laugh.  Of course Arthur was sick.  Look what kind of figments his imagination had produced…

            They bickered as they always used to, but Arthur didn’t care anymore.  He understood now why his mind had created monstrosities that behaved like that.  He couldn’t give in to them and make it worse.

            After a while, the bickering stopped.  “Do you really want us to go?” Maxwell asked.

            “Yes.”

            “We probably won’t be able to come back ever again,” Curt said.  His voice trembled.

            “Fine.”

            Still they hesitated without leaving.  “At least tell us what’s wrong before you kick us out forever,” Curt begged.

            Arthur shook his head.  “You only exist in my mind, so you ‘ave to already know!”

            “We’re _real_.  And we can’t read your mind.”

            “We’ll go, but only if you tell us first,” Maxwell insisted.

            Held to ransom by his own imagination!  Somehow, even that felt appropriate.  Maybe it meant that he had to let it out.  Maybe if he said it, he’d understand why everyone said he was sick.  Maybe if he told the story, he wouldn’t feel that way anymore.  Maybe he’d be able to get over it.

            With a deep sigh that was still racked by sobs, Arthur tried to find a way to tell the story.  “It was during lunch today at school.  A while back, Mac found a place we could sit to eat where no one could see.”

            “Who’s Mac?”  Curt’s voice sounded almost jealous.

            “My best mate—”  Arthur almost choked on his own words.  “My only mate—my _former_ mate…”

            “Only one friend?”  Maxwell’s hand tightened around Arthur’s.  “How could they fail to appreciate someone as charming as you are?”

            “Don’t laugh at me,” Arthur begged, before his voice was taken over by hiccoughing sobs.  “Mac and I would eat there and look at magazines he’d brought to school.  Things the teachers would take away if they saw them.”  Music monthlies, mostly.  Mac was a big fan of rock and roll, and could tell you the name of every artist involved in a song, not just the singers, but who was playing the guitars, drums, keyboard, triangle, cow bell, or any other odd instrument a band might supplement their music with.

            “What, like girlie mags?”  Curt asked, loosening his grip on Arthur’s shoulders.

            Arthur shook his head.  If only Mac had brought something like that!  Then maybe this wouldn’t have happened…  “No, noth—nothing like that…”

            “So, did the teachers catch you there today?”

            “I wish that had happened,” Arthur sobbed.  “We were talkin’ and jokin’ around, and then it got all quiet and he was smilin’ at me and—and—and I—”  Even though he knew there were no such things as monsters from under the bed, Arthur couldn’t resist leaning in against Curt, trying to suffocate himself in the long, soft fur on his chest.  “I thought he felt the same as me…” he whined into the fur.

            “Arthur…”  Maxwell let go of his hand.  He must have figured out where the story was going.  Even a demonic figment of Arthur’s imagination was disgusted by what he had done?

            But he couldn’t stop now.  He had to finish.  He had to let it out so maybe it would go away and people wouldn’t hate him anymore.  “I knew I shouldn’t do it—I didn’t mean to do it!”  Arthur’s voice was a loud wail that normally would have had his father running in to give him another hiding.  “It wasn’t—I didn’t mean to do anything bad!  Other boys get to kiss the person they fancy!  I just…I…”

            As Arthur was overcome by his tears again, he felt Curt’s other arm pull him tightly against his chest.  “Kissing the person you like isn’t bad,” Curt whispered, his breath rustling the hair on top of Arthur’s head.

            “It is when he’s a boy!”

            “No, it’s not,” Curt insisted.  “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

            Arthur shook his head, trying weakly to pull out of the bear hug.  “It _was_ wrong.  Mac didn’t feel the same at all.  He hit me and then he told the professors, and _they_ hit me, and they told my father, and he—he—”

            “They’re the ones who were wrong, not you,” Maxwell suddenly interjected.

            “No, it’s—they said I’m sick…”

            “They’re the ones who are sick.  Hatred is a disease.”

            “Max, that’s not really gonna help right now.”

            “What would you have me say, then?  I can’t erase what happened.”  Maxwell sighed.  “You have to stay strong and rise above them.  That’s all you can do.  To persevere, no matter what they do or say.”

            More hiccoughing sobs wracked Arthur’s body.  “They’re sendin’ me away in the morning,” he said.  “Someplace the principal suggested.  Where they can cure me so I won’t like boys anymore.”  Or maybe they were just going to lock him up so he wouldn’t infect anyone else.  Lock him up and throw away the key.

            “That’s bullshit.  They can’t cure you because there’s nothing _wrong_ with you!”  Curt pulled him in closer even as he growled words that Arthur knew couldn’t be true.

            They stayed like that for quite some time, until footsteps in the hall forced Curt and Maxwell to retreat back under the bed.  The sound of the door opening was a relief to Arthur:  he thought it was his father, come to finish him off.  Being dead would be better than keeping going like this.

            But it wasn’t.  It was Nigel, who thought it absolutely hilarious that his fairy of a brother was crying in a lump on the floor.  His taunts kept echoing through the room long after he departed.

            Once Arthur was alone again, nothing changed.

            He kept crying until he ran out of tears.

            He must have drifted off to sleep at some point, because it was past five when he sat up and looked around the room with a new clarity.  He knew what he had to do now, for the first time in years.

            Walking quietly, so he wouldn’t wake his family, Arthur went to the window and opened it.  His bedroom was only one storey up, so he would _probably_ survive the jump.  Might break a leg, but he’d be able to hobble away on a broken leg, he was sure.

            He didn’t want any of his things.  Why would he?  There was no need.

            The only regret he had was…

            Slowly, feeling like a fool, Arthur walked over to the side of his bed.  They weren’t real.  He _knew_ they weren’t real.  It was absurd to want to say goodbye to his imaginary friends.

            But they were the only ones who had ever cared about him.  Or they would have been, if they were real.  It just didn’t feel right to leave without saying something.

            So he got down on his hands and knees and put his face up to the gap under the bed, planning on just saying “goodbye” and having done with it.  But instead of an empty blackness and the same stale air as filled the rest of the room, Arthur felt a fresh breeze hit his face.  It was warmer than the cold February air outside the open window, and it smelled faintly of flowers and champagne.

            It couldn’t be that they were real.  This was simply more of his delusion.

            But maybe it wouldn’t hurt to indulge it just one more time.

            Carefully, Arthur eased himself under the bed.  As soon as he had done so, he felt the floor beneath him give way, and he tumbled down a few feet, landing on a plush carpet.  Perplexed, Arthur got to his feet, and looked around him.  It looked like the interior of a flying saucer, all gleaming white panels bound together with silver.  Standing nearby were two handsome men dressed entirely in shining gold leather, kissing.  One of them had short, brown hair, and the other shoulder-length hair that was a paler brown, bordering on blond.  They were entirely absorbed in their embrace, and Arthur thought they were the most beautiful creatures he had ever seen.

            He wished some man would kiss him like that someday.

            Arthur just stood there, silently watching them, entranced by the magic of their passion, until a siren ripped through the air.  The men parted, though still gazing at each other with such warmth and love as Arthur had never seen before.

            Then one of them glanced over and saw him.

            The long-haired man stepped away from his partner, moving several steps towards Arthur, his face more alarmed than angry.  “Arthur?”  His voice was so familiar, so soothing…  “What the fuck are you doing here?!”

            “Curt?”  Had Arthur been slightly less surprised, his jaw would have dropped in astonishment, but he was far beyond that.  “But…how…?”  Though now that he thought about it, the colour of this man’s hair was exactly that of Curt’s fur.

            “That was the warning alarm,” the other man said, in Maxwell’s voice, as he moved up beside the not-wolf Curt.  “The sun will be coming up soon.”

            “What’s going on?” Arthur asked, shaking his head.  “I don’t understand!”

            “This is where we live,” Curt told him.  “That’s the passage to your room up there,” he added, pointing to a narrow opening near head-height.  “We, uh, sorta change when we pass through it.”  He laughed nervously.  “Obviously.”

            Arthur bit his lip a minute.  “Can I…do I have to go back?” he asked.  “Can’t I stay here?”

            “If you’re still here when the sun comes up, you’ll become one of us,” Maxwell said.  “You’ll only be able to return to the surface world at night.  The sun will burn—even kill if you’re exposed to it for long enough—and even artificial light will sting.”

            “You can’t mean you want him to go back to people like that!” Curt shouted, pointing at the opening.  “You know what his old man does to him!”

            Maxwell shook his head.  “I mean nothing of the sort.  But I don’t want him making his choice in ignorance, as you and I did.”  He smiled gently.  “Of course I want him to stay here with us.”

            “Then I’ll stay!” Arthur exclaimed, running the short distance between him and the two of them.  “I don’t want to go back there!  I hate it there!  And they all hate me, so…”

            Curt pulled him into another hug as Arthur started crying again.  “They’ll never be able to hurt you again, I promise.”

            “But you’ll never see anyone you care about again,” Maxwell said.  “Even if you do return to the surface world, you won’t look like yourself anymore.”

            Arthur turned in Curt’s arms so he could look at Maxwell.  “What _will_ I look like?”

            Maxwell shrugged.  “Everyone’s transformation is different.  I’m told it’s some rubbish about taking the true form of our souls…”

            Despite himself, Arthur couldn’t contain a laugh.  “You have the soul of a snake-demon?”

            “Apparently.  But I want to hear no complaints if you go up and find yourself a six-foot slug!”

            Arthur nodded.  “Slugs don’t have mouths.”

            Maxwell laughed, and stepped in closer, adding his arms to the embrace.

            They stood there until long after the dawn had sealed the portal back up to Arthur’s room; the two beautiful men kept holding him protectively in their arms, filling Arthur with the finest warmth.

            For the first time in his life, Arthur felt truly loved.

 

***

 

            Mrs. Stuart slowly climbed the stairs.  They seemed to get longer every day.  Some of the police assured her that it wasn’t unusual for a runaway to forget to bring any of his belongings with him, and that she shouldn’t worry, because he had probably found a way aboard a train for London, and that was why they hadn’t found him.  Others had been dragging the rivers, and checking the morgues.  And a few were investigating Jim, in the absurd belief that he could have killed their baby.  Just because he could be a bit violent when he had one too many!

            Jim didn’t seem worried.  Not about Arthur or about the police.  He should have been home with her, sitting by, anxious for news.  Instead he was down the pub, as he would be any normal night.  Nigel was no better, but he at least lied about it:  he was off with his girlfriend, but he had shown the kindness to say he was searching for his missing brother.

            She might have passed by the door to Arthur’s room, if she hadn’t heard a noise inside.  Just the quiet creak of a floorboard, as if someone was within.

            What she saw when she opened the door had to have been a trick of the moonlight, or her shame and guilt playing with her mind.  But she saw—thought she saw—a slender, blue-haired man in a gossamer blouse of brilliant amethyst sparkles, with butterfly wings that matched his rose-coloured tights.  He turned at the sound of the door, and his face!  It was older, and an unnatural shade of pink, but she was so certain that it was Arthur’s face that she even called his name before collapsing to her knees, momentarily overcome.

            When she recovered from her spell, the man was gone.  Surely he had never been there at all.  How could he have been?  The window was still shut, and no one could have gotten up the stairs without her seeing them.

            But where he had been standing in the shaft of moonlight let in by the open curtains, Mrs. Stuart noticed a piece of paper.  Retrieving it, she found a letter in her boy’s handwriting…

 

> Mum,
> 
>             I’m sorry.  Please don’t worry about me.  I can never come home, but I’m all right.
> 
>             Tell Dad I’m sorry I can’t be a man like he wants.  But I have to be who I really am.  I can’t be anyone else.
> 
>             I’ve found friends who don’t mind that I’m a fairy.  We’re leaving together, and they’ll take good care of me.  And I’ll never let anyone hurt me again.
> 
>  
> 
>             Love,
> 
>                         Arthur.


End file.
